Costs judge refuses fee uplift for McCann stalker case

A costs judge has refused an uplift of a firm’s legal aid fee in a high-profile case appeal after finding a defendant’s use of AI is not ‘novel’.

Criminal defence firm SVS Solicitors represented Julia Dorota Wandel who was, along with a co-defendant, charged with stalking, causing serious alarm or distress over her alleged stalking of Kate and Gerald McCann, whose three-year-old daughter Madeleine disappeared in 2007. 

The defendant claimed she was Madeleine ‘despite conclusive DNA evidence to the contrary’ and was alleged to have used AI to produce letters in support of that preposition and to fabricate childhood memories. Following a five week trial, she was convicted of the lesser offence of harassment and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

The firm made a claim for payment on the basis that the offence for which Wandel was tried should be classified as a Class B offence, but the legal aid determining officer concluded that Class C for ‘lesser offences’ was more appropriate.

In R v Wandel, Costs Judge Leonard said the firm argued that the allegations made about Wandel’s use of AI ‘added another layer of complexity’ to a ‘wholly exceptional’ case. ‘The prosecution sought, and attracted, a great deal of world-wide media coverage. This intense scrutiny, says the appellant, placed an exceptional burden on the defence team…The resources and time required to manage a case of this profile significantly exceeded those of a standard stalking prosecution.’

However the judge found that the proposition that the classification of an offence should turn upon matters such as the degree of public interest was ‘not…a logical one’.

The judge said that although he did not agree with the determining officer’s Class C classification, Class B was not appropriate. He added: ‘I would not have been able to attach any material weight to the claimed additional burden upon the appellant generated by the exceptional degree of public interest in the case, the alleged additional layer of complexity brought about by the defendant’s alleged use of AI, or the defendant’s mental health problems.

‘I say that because a defendant’s solicitor is always under a duty to provide the best reasonably possible service to a client, the degree of public interest notwithstanding. There is nothing novel or unusual about the use of AI in 2025, and mental illness is a commonplace feature of stalking and harassment cases.’

The judge said the offence should have been classed as a Class H offence - which covers miscellaneous other offences - but as the respondent, the lord chancellor, was ‘content’ to uphold the determining officer’s decision, it remained as a Class C case.

The appeal was dismissed.